How to bring fun activities and values together

In the past two months, I had the opportunity to work as an intern in Levi Snow Sport Academy (LSSA) and also in partnership with REDU. There are many reasons that made this period a success and, of course, being in a beautiful region in Ruska time with the first visible northern lights helps to spicy it up.

The focus of LSSA is mainly on the winter time, that is what they normally are anxious for and you can notice that the students are counting the days for the slopes to open and start to practice their passion. But to have a successful winter period it is also needed to build up a strong foundation and that is the purpose of this Autumn period.

The program organized by the institution has in its basis games and sports, things that we all love to practice, after all, who doesn’t like to play soccer, basketball, have a little lesson on how to climb, feel the adrenaline of downhill bicycle or have a nice day paddling at the river surrounded by beautiful nature? But behind the scenes it is building up values that will help the students to work as a community in the future.

Bellow I will share three main things that, in my view, were building up during the Autumn program, besides of course, the technical skills:

• Integration: Team sports, team games and hiking together as a group helps to integrate new people into the team. Majority of them know already each other, but the activities help the new students to find common interests with the rest of the group.
• Empathy: The range of activities is so diverse that we always find something that we are very bad at, that makes us humble and help us to understand other people when they lack some skill or it is just starting a new activity. I can give you my example that in average I can play well majority of the sports, but put this Brazilian in an ice rink and you will see a completely beginner, lost and in need of help even with the simplest things.
• Communication and problem solve: Every game has a purpose and a rule on how to win and during the activity you mix in groups people with completely different background, skills, believes, but with one goal: to succeed in the game. That requires that individuals so different between each other to have a lot of communication and problem solve skills between them. Well, isn’t that exactly how life goes? Think about the organizations and teams that you have worked with, so many different people from you, but you need to manage and understand what is your role in the group to make sure we all win.

To finalize, I need to make clear that would be impossible to have such an amazing time here without the support of the LSSA team, REDU instructors, the high energy that the students bring and the amazing local community that makes me feel at home, even being so distant from my hometown.

More information of Levi Snow Sport Academy at: www.levisnowsportacademy.com

Tiago Juho is a Brazilian / Finnish student at Humak University in the second year of Adventure & Outdoor Education. He is passionate for sports, expeditions, photography and any activity that can lead for good learning and adventure. For more information his Instagram is open: https://www.instagram.com/tyjuho/